


Tally Marks

by hellowkatey



Series: Febuwhump 2021 [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Blood and Violence, FebuWhump2021, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, Impalement, Impaling, Shock, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 07:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29185458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellowkatey/pseuds/hellowkatey
Summary: After a battle, Ahsoka has a revelation about the truth of what war does to those who never wanted to be involved.[Febuwhump day 4: Impaling]
Series: Febuwhump 2021 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2138259
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26





	Tally Marks

For Ahsoka, the war never really felt like a war. Maybe it was the fact they fought machines rather than men. Her lightsaber sliced through the durasteel plating of the battle droids as easy as the practice dummies in the Temple. She could pull wires out of their chests and watch the light dim from the bulbs in their eyes and that was about as sentient as it got.

She's only been in this fight for a few months. She has a mental tally of every droid she's personally dismembered, and a physical one on the wall of the clone breakroom next to Captian Rex's. It's a game, in a way. They yell out numbers on the battlefield. Some of the troopers like to use their armor to keep track in real-time. Battles after battles, the tallies creeping down the walls like a life sentence.

At some point, the color of the marker changed from black to blue, and for some reason, she can't get over the idea that their tally marker spent its entire ink supply making only three-centimeter lines, day after day.

Today she reached a milestone. One thousand battle droids laid to rest by the blades of her lightsabers since she joined the war at the Battle of Christophsis. One thousand clankers that don't get the opportunity to fire their blasters again. Ahsoka walks through the center of the now-deserted battlefield with giddiness in her step. A few of the troopers who fought alongside her offer high fives as they pass, congratulating her on her accomplishment. 

Ahsoka is beaming. She feels like she is floating, eager to find Master Skywalker and tell him the great news. The young Togruta decides to cut through an alleyway to the next street where she can feel the Force Presences of both Anakin and Master Kenobi. Within the alley, there is a fork, and down the straight path, she can see Captain Rex and Commander Cody standing with their backs to her. 

But even so, she stares down the other path. It winds behind the front building to some residential tenements of the small city. Though her Master and friends are ahead, there is something nagging at her to turn that way. Ahsoka senses no danger in the Force, and she taps her fingers against her commlink to make sure it's there. Following her feelings, she goes the other way. 

The midday sun provides plenty of light in other places, but the apartments here loom high enough to cast a shadow over her passageway. Ahsoka pulls her cloak around her tighter, glancing into the windows of the evacuated homes. 

Broken transperisteel clutters the ground where bombs dropped in the area and blew out the windows of the houses. She steps over the piles of rubble and puddles of who-knows-what until the near groan of pain catches her keen Togruta ears. She stops midstep, tilting her head to hone in on the noise. It's coming from the home at the end of the street. Ahsoka jogs ahead, her heart starting to pound faster as a few drops of blood along her path turns into a trail, and then a continuous line leading straight into the blown down door. 

She peers around the corner, and every muscle in her body tenses. 

Lying in the far corner of the house is a young boy. His chest heaves up and down in slow heavy draws as his hand clutches his leg. To her horror, a large piece of shrapnel sticks out of his thigh, impaling his leg, and the obvious cause of the blood smeared across the floor. His head rolls to the side, and he stares at her with a glassy expression. 

"Hello," he rasps. A casual greeting for such a gruesome scene. Ahsoka finds her senses and rushes forward, falling at his side. 

"You're hurt," she says, tearing off a strip of her cloak to tie a tourniquet. As though that fact wasn't readily obvious. To her surprise, he chuckles. Pushes her hand with the strip of cloth away. She looks at him, his big brown eyes filled with what she can only describe as peace. 

"It's too late," 

"It's not! I--I'll bring you back to the camp, we have the best medics--"

"No," he shakes his head. "I am ready to die." 

Her throat feels like it's closing. She closes the pieces of her cloak in her fist. "You're so young, though."

"Sixteen," he says. "Yesterday, actually." 

His face grows paler by the second. Blood is pooling around him, around Ahsoka now, but she doesn't care to move. Instead, she takes his hand, startled by its icy coldness. 

"Will you bring them to me?" 

"Who?" 

"My family." 

"Of course, yes. Where can I find them? I'll go as quickly as I can." 

He shakes his head. Slowly brings his other hand up to point. Ahsoka follows his direction to a holoimage on the wall. She stands, her knee leaving a clean imprint on the floor before the blood fills the space. She takes the holo off the wall, spotting the boy in the center of a group hug by others with big brown eyes and reddish-brown hair. A mother and father, brothers and sisters with wide smiles and shining eyes. 

This is his family home. He is dying in his home. 

She brings the picture to him, and he holds it in his lap, staring at the people. Reaching out as though he can touch the holo. 

"Where are they?" Ahsoka asks. Hoping, _praying_ they are in a camp somewhere. 

"Where I'm about to go," he whispers. His eyes look from the holo to Ahsoka, and he smiles. "Thank you," he says, "for this gift you have given me."

She doesn't tell him she has given him no gift. If anything, she is part of the reason he lies here now. She is merely a bystander in a moment she feels she has no right to be a part of, but yet his cold fingers intertwine with hers. She takes hold of the holoimage that now falls from his other hand, and makes sure he gets to see it the entire time. 

Strangely, in a way that feels far too detached to be real, watching the light leave the eyes of a sentient is a lot like seeing the bulb go out in a droid. 

She isn't sure how long she sits there. Long enough that when she finally stands again the blood has dried into her pants, and it doesn't flow to fill her absence any longer. She can't stop looking at the piece of shrapnel that tears through the vessels and muscles of his leg. 

A piece of a battle droid. A part of the arm, it seems. 

Ahsoka feels like everything around her is obstructed by static. Nothing feels real, just like a horrible dream that she hopefully will wake up for at any moment. And yet, when her commlink rings and it's a message from Anakin wondering where she is, she doesn't wake up in her bunk on the ship. 

She doesn't know their customs on this planet. Do they bury their dead or burn them? Doesn't even remember the name of the damned planet, which suddenly feels like a pit in her gut. So she does her best. Takes her lightsaber out and cuts the droid arm from his leg. Takes a blanket from the bedroom and wraps him carefully in it, his arms crossed comfortably and the holo pressed between his palms and his chest. When she emerges from the house, the sun is starting to hang low in the sky, the shadow of the alley even darker than before. 

And yet somehow, she sees more this time. 

She looks through the windows as she passes, not seeing battle anymore but devastation. Ahsoka can see the remnants of what used to be family homes. Holoimages flicker with limited power the faces of the people that escaped the city in the night. They had no time to waste when the call came in, packed nothing but what they needed to survive, and ran into the foothills. Established refugee camps where supplies will be funneled in the weeks to come until their city is rebuilt... though it may never be the same.

Couches covered in soft blankets and pillows where families would curl up on the weekends to watch holofilms. Trinkets lining shelves that probably meant something to someone at one time. Abandoned. Covered in glass and ash. Homes suddenly uninhabitable because of a war nobody here asked for. And as she takes stock of the neighborhood, she also realizes many of the homes have painted names above their thresholds-- a memorial for the names of their dead.

She blinks back tears. Nearly every door has names painted. Many with multiple. Their own tally marks. 

Ahsoka runs back to the house of the boy, trying not to look at his bundled body as she searches for paint to at least give him this honor. Her stomach drops when she finds it already sitting next to the door, the brush still wet. 

The names of his family already line their threshold. 

_Jebra_

_Imi._

_Hales._

_Yezha._

But as she raises the brush, a sickening revelation makes her burst into tears. 

She never learned his name. 

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, so this got SAD. Sorry about that.


End file.
